Catcher Of Dreams

I am in that place in my life where all my dreams have come and gone. When I was a younger lass, I had so many dreams. I wanted it all. I would write my novels by day, while the children played happily at my feet. My husband, loving and supportive, would come home from his work and give me a kiss on the cheek. We would all sit down at the table to eat dinner together. Nights were for family time. Bathing the children, reading them stories to put them to sleep. Time to cuddle and snuggle with the husband in front of the tv, while I knit sweet things for the home and family. Sleeping arm in arm beside the love of my life.

My dreams seem so small now. I never wanted to be famous. I just wanted to be loved. I almost thought I had these things that I thought I wanted so badly not too long ago. It was harder to let go of the dreams than it was to release the reality.

Here I am, in a new space, facing a new day, needing new dreams. Now I am a single woman, with two children, sleeping with a dog beside me in the bed instead of a husband. I have had my head down for too long, fighting just to stay afloat, much less trying to live, or have dreams, or even goals beyond the mortgage is paid and there is food on the table and the kids have clothes.

It is time for me to go out and seek new dreams. Not just seek them out, but to catch them, hunt them down, capture them, drive them home into my heart, feed them, nurture them and make them grow.

It has been too long since I was able to stop and think about what I want, about where I want to go. I have been living moment by moment, praying the future would be good once I got there, but that isn’t the way to go. This isn’t what the Buddha meant by living in the moment. You must live in the moment, but know the future is coming and be ready to absorb and experience it as well. Living in the moment is not about letting go of your past, as it is what made you who you are. It is not about letting go of the future, for that is what you shall be, who you shall become. You must live in the present moment, ever mindful of the past and future and how they all coincide within the present moment. I had lost sight of that.

When I was younger, before I turned ten and began to actually write, I had two dreams in my life. What I wanted to be when I grew up. I wanted to be a cowgirl and a veterinarian. Well, after some interning at a local animal hospital, very temporary, I decided, no, cutting animals open and poking around in their insides was not something I could handle. Let me take care of them before and after, but no knives and no needles for me. I never really gave up the cowgirl idea, but we’ll come around to that in a bit, I suppose.

At about ten years of age, I started writing. Poetry. I was in a very religious phase then. This is also when I set about researching every religion I could get my hands on. When I turned against Catholicism for good. I slowly came to realize that I wanted to write, as a career choice. It was about this time the thought of becoming a teacher entered into my growing little brain. Why not combine the two? I always wanted to teach younger children, pre-school into kindergarten, sometimes even the first grade. I loved children at that age. I still do.

I never pursued it. As I went through public school as a student, I watched how some teachers were treated, how some where reviled and how others were glorified. If a teacher is not teaching and more than 80% of all her classes are failing, she should not be allowed to crow about tenure so she can keep her job—she should be fired outright. Whereas a teacher with a genuine medical disability who misses school periodically but is successful in teaching and inspiring her students should not be dismissed due to her medical absences. Add into the entire process of me not being taught anything new since about fifth or sixth grade….I had moved around so much that I had already been taught in earlier grades what the higher grades struggled with, leaving me cold and bored with the education process. Which then caused me turn to my writing that much more. There lay one dream down, heartlessly murdered by a bureaucratic system that simply did not care. I allowed that one to drown in its own blood, as I stepped over its corpse, hoping a new star would shine in my life.

Writing became my everything. My passion. My escape. My release. It is all I did, all I could do, other than read, and pray.

A new dream did surface, however strange it seemed. I wanted to be a Priest. Not just any old priest either. I did not want a congregation, was not called to preach nor to enlighten. I wanted to be a Jesuit monk. I wanted access to the documents the Vatican hides from the light of public consumption. I wanted to work to translate the ancient archaic documents. I wanted to uncover the hidden secrets of the world’s religions’ ideals and ideas. I wanted to see the Truth in black and white, not someone else’s translation or interpretation. I wanted to Touch God through His Word drawn out on paper by His Chosen Men – and Women.

Alas, I have no penis. So, no priesthood for me. Another excellent aptitude for study tossed away because of the rules of the system. I do not trust nuns, so becoming a nun was not a valid option for me. I barely ever entertained that thought, it makes my stomach twist so. It is a genetic flaw in me from my mother having been beaten so badly when she was younger and in convent school, or so I tell myself anyway. Not that she wasn’t beaten; she still bears the physical scars visible to this day where everyone can see them. My mother nearly became a nun. She was a very devout Catholic. Then she met my dad and had me. I never even knew I was technically a Catholic til I was a teen-ager. No one ever told me. I knew my mother had been Catholic, but that had never had anything to do with me. I wasn’t raised with any specific religion. All my religious training came from what I learned from others and what I taught myself from books, once I decided it would be a good thing to do, at about the age of ten or thereabouts.

Always a writer, that was a dream. Not a dream, but a Dream, capital D. I graduated high school and I ran away. School left such a horrid taste in my mouth, I decided to forego college. The original thought was for a year or two. I always planned to go back to school, some sort of college, even if I got a liberal arts degree with a heavy literature and creative writing emphasis. That, too, was not to be.

I met a man. Someone to save me from me. Someone to give me all my dreams with the touch of his hand, the sweetness of his kiss. We married. It was servitude. It was all about his needs. I lost myself. My dreams centered around making him happy, keeping him satisfied and coming home. Too late, I realized it wasn’t me who kept him from being happy. Too late, I realized I was more than good enough for him, but he wasn’t at all good enough for me.

I did take writing classes here and there during the marriage. I did other things as well, struggling while he told me on one hand to pursue whatever made me happy while on the other ridiculing me and cutting me down at every opportunity. I gave up, in the end, because trying to make him happy was too large a job for me to have any other focus or ideal.

Push came to shove, I found myself, without surprise, legally separated, still involved with the husband on way too many levels, hopping into a rebound relationship which gave me nothing but trouble and a beautiful little girl. The divorce was final and the husband and I were reconciling, moving back in together. Nothing changed with him, but everything was changing with me. This is not the life I wanted for my child. I did not want her to grow to believe this was how things had to be, how lovers treated one another.

I went to massage school. I found my own place. I worked hard at first, until it dawned on me; this was not where I wanted to be. Although it took only a couple weeks for me to realize that actual hands-on massage healing was not for me, I learned a great deal. It did not endear the human population to me anymore than I was already endeared, which was not very much at all. I did meet some incredible people though, some of whom I still speak to today, often. Not to mention, one of the guest teachers ended up fathering my second child, my son.

I have regrets. I have a ton of them. The difference is, now, from where I am sitting, I wouldn’t change a single thing in my past. If I did, I would not be where I am right this minute, and that would be a terrible shame to miss out on the things that are going on in my world right now.

I gave in to pressure and tried my best to create an actual family. Too bad the father didn’t understand the concept of a true family; the poor man still doesn’t either. There were no dreams there. That man successfully killed everything I had had left to hold dear. I didn’t struggle so much to realign myself with my dreams or my ideals, as I fought simply to hold on to today, just right here. I couldn’t find a dream. The best I could do was set up some goals. He still did his best to create turmoil and cause me to fail.

I am stronger than that. I am stronger than him. I am better than him. I am determined to win. I had a one-year goal plan. I made it all in two. It may have taken me longer to get there, but I did get there, with bells on.

Here I am, again on a cusp. I fought for my family. Now it’s time to fight for myself. That’s what I am doing.

I sift through the detritus that is my past, digging through the silt and the ash. There is so much scar tissue. Not all of it is healed. Not everything is scabbed over yet. There are many deep grievous wounds that still suppurate and bubble over. Some from too long ago. There is nothing really anymore that I can do, other than to treat them, and therefore myself, that much more gently. I can apply the salves and the packs and the bandages, but sometimes healing takes a very long time and there is nothing else to be done other than waiting out the process.

Yet, I can hear them, buried, profoundly rooted, screaming and sobbing, begging me to find them, to unearth them, to let them breathe, let them live again, even for just one moment. All my tools seem to have been lost along those myriad roads all these years. I must get down on my hands and knees and claw my way through, probing into harsh unyielding tissue, grown rock-solid and diamond-hard, nearly impenetrable. I have no fingernails to begin with, and now I am down to bloody stubs, shredding through using the flesh and bone of my fingers in my efforts to set my own precious self free. However will I get a garden to grow in such inhospitable soil? However will I manage to trench in far enough to allow my dreams to suck air, much less drag them kicking and screaming to the surface and to the light of day?

All of that makes no never-mind to me. I have a job to do and I am a very focused creature once I set my mind in motion. I am a daemon possessed as I listen to the pitiful cries and mews of those Dreams, those tiny hungry babies locked in the retreat of my mind. I fight, fight for their life, fight for mine.

Maybe if you saw me you would be surprised. I would not be, not at all. I know my hair is wild and savage and flying all over the place as I shake and toss it angrily out of the way time and again. I know my body is being racked with tremors that I cannot shake, puns be damned, sweat streaming off me in rivulets, staining my body and the ground surrounding me. The ground itself swells and heaves, like a volcano attempting to shove its way up through the barrier of rock and stone and soil, as if it would jettison up the dreams if only it could simply to remove the arduous pain of my scratching and biting as I burrow in more and more. Tears pour by the bucketsful from my eyes. I am nearly blind from sweat and tears and the blood from my hands as I periodically reach to knuckle the tears away. I feel as if I have stumbled into some hot briny caldron, so rises the wetness up too close to me. I feel I am in the Giant’s big black kettle, being turned into wild woman soup. Nothing stops me. I may have to pause to make macaroni and cheese for my children, but I never give up on my dreams. Not any more. I will always return to dig up more until we are all set Free.

Eventually, after months of excavation, procrastination, remonstration, finally I have pulled a few dreams free from their mire. They sure are not pretty. They need a good scrub, some polishing, and lots of genuine love and encouragement.

Here, this little lump of green, all wadded up into itself, gone far more than fetal in position, this was my Dream of being a Writer, capital W. This is my dream to be the Great Novelist, the Great Short Story Creatrix, the Ever-Musing Poet. She needs a lot of special care, this little one. So near to my heart is She. My oldest, my most-beloved Dream, still struggling to be the Seed, to find the soil to set down in, to gather her forces and grow roots and sprout forth into an ever-amazing, ever-blooming wonderful Tree.

This, this smashed bit of ochre, this too was a Dream. Something I had done long ago, but overlooked, forgotten, hadn’t really thought much about nor allowed much to rest upon its abilities. It whispers in its sweet little voice to draw, to pick up the crayon, the pencil, to put it to paper and draw draw draw. Let go of the fear and step ahead. Paint and glue and collage and work into things far more gracious. This little thing longs to be a huge towering Redwood Tree in my Forest. Start small. Start with the pencil. Grand things shall from this tend.

Here is a small black piece, hard and soft, like a lump of West Virginia coal dug out of the humble walls of a basement to be thrown into the furnace to heat the entire house overhead. This, this is my dream of, Healing. I didn’t want to be a psychic. I’m just good at it. I wanted to Heal people, to help people Heal themselves, to Guide them in their journeys. I don’t want to do massage work. I want to do Energetic work, Soul Work, Shamanic work , Shifting Consciousness work. I want to Counsel people, help them find what they are looking for, help them see what it is they truly seek and help them as they find their way. This is me. This is what makes me happy, what fulfills me. Being the shoulder to cry on, patting the tears dry and giving them something of value to hold on to as they carry on, so they can support themselves along the way. It is not me. It is merely what they need for and of themselves expressed through me.

I had to force and plunder to reach this other one, so tiny had it become, charred and blackened, but some of the indigo almost visible through the cracking. This one, this broken shattered whimpering thing was once my Dream of being a Teacher. Someone who Guides and Inspires. That is me too, part of my Healing work, part of my Destiny. I have turned so far against the mainstream of things that work as a school teacher, in either a private or public arena, would simply not be adequate for me. Not in this country. This little gem, I keep turning around, redirecting, sanding, weaving, changing. I have no desire to work in a school environment. That part of the dream atrophied and died long ago. I can work around the scar tissue. I Dream of becoming a Waldorf-certified Teacher. I do not plan to work in a school. I definitely plan to home-school my children throughout their lives, just as I continue my own education every single day of my life. I do plan to have children in my life, all my life, and wish to do what I can to offer them the nurturing and educational space they need to be truly great intellectuals and people. Let this one sprout, bloom, and rival the sky with its heavenly scents and ideas.

Down at the end, I found an old shoebox, sun-stained, muddied, looking as if a herd of elephants had stampeded over it, more than once. When I managed to loose it from the death-grip my mind-soil held upon it, it took far too much work to prise the lid off that box, so tightly squelched and abused was the whole thing. That alone would not be enough to cause me to give up. I nearly missed it, so nearly microscopic had it become. This timid teensy little thing, shaking and choking on fear, cowering down in the darkest shadows in the furthest corner of the box from where I sat, peering in at it with trepidation in my eyes and soul. I didn’t know what to do, what to make of it. I reached in to save it, retrieve it, only to have the vile little beastie nip at me with viper sharp teeth. It drew blood! The fiend!

I called this one, long ago, the “Barbie Dream”. You know Barbie. The doll. ‘The bitch has everything.’ my mother used to tell me. I did not play with Barbie growing up. She was unseemly. I had Charlie’s Angels dolls, and a doll called Darci, who was a model. I loved them. They were tough, independent and better than men. Barbie was a sell-out. The Barbie Dream is the house, the kids, the husband, the cars in the garage, the white picket fence, the well-behaved dog. You know, the “perfect every-day family”. Ozzie and Harriet. Wally and the Beav’s parents. Samantha and Darren in their utterly topsy-turvy yet oh-so-perfect world. Where everything looked good. Where families were devoted to one another. The ‘perfect’ world. The ‘perfect’ life.

This one scares me, more than all the rest put toghether. The rest I know I can do, I can accomplish, I can achieve. They all depend upon me, just me. Even if I am never published, if no one ever buys one piece of art, even if I never have another child or come in contact with another child, even if all my clients desert me, they all depend upon me ultimately, all those Dreams. This one, this Dream right here, depends on someone else as well. A man, at that.

I trust the man, this man. Finally, I have a good good man in my world and in my heart. I do not trust ….that Dream. Depending upon a man, even this man. I do not trust that it won’t seem perfect at first before disintegrating into chaos and bedlam, leaving me lost and cold, hurt and angry, devesatated and all alone, struggling again. I am afraid of this dream. Afraid to take it up, cuddle it to my breast, succor it and cede it. But I Want it. Want it. I want to be happy. I want that family. So, I would prefer a barb-wire fence to white picket, but a fence is a fence. So, I want a much bigger house, because I want more children of my own, and guests and visitors and new-comers and friends to come and stay with us. I want the marriage, the snuggling into someone in front of the fireplace while we each do our things, together. I can knit. He can read. Someone who supports me, the way I support him. I am not asking for perfection. I am not expecting a rose-garden, except maybe I do. I expect there to be thorns, trials and tribulations along the way, but over-all I anticipate the beauty of our love and friendship and connection to win out. This is my Dream. Not of a perfect life. But, of a Good Life, a solid honest open communicative Life. With a close-knit solid family to be the backbone and support system for all of us, children and grand-children too. Where we are safe in our home without worrying about the ills of the world blowing our way. Where we stand together and brave all perils, trusting in one another’s arms and embraces.

That is my Dream. It may take this one a lot longer to grow. This one will need a lot more tending and care, a lot more fertilizing and weeding and sorting through. Yet, it is my Dream and it will come True. I know. I believe.

Here are all my dreams caught in the web of my own design. Here is my little garden that I grow inside my heart. Here is me finally accepting that the past is done and new things can come in now.

My gut twisted, my eyes teared, and there is a tapping from the inside of my chest. It is my heart begging me to do what you have done…to lay it all out there baring my sould like you have done and give voice to my dream. But I’m so afraid, Tabitha. And I don’t know why! I have a wonderful life at this moment and yet there is still something missing…besides courage…

How brave of you to write so honestly of your life. I can identify with a lot of it having been a single mum for many, many years. I too lost sight of my dreams and am now seeking dreams that will carry me into my future now my kids have grown.
Well done. You have inspired me.

Extraordinary Tabitha. I know the space you are in all too well. I won’t go on about it. What I suggest is that you acquire a copy of Robert Johnson’s Living Your Unlived Life. I am currently working with a stack of his wonderful books.

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